Craven County’s New Year’s baby is a boy

There’s a new boy in town, the first of the 2013 New Year in Craven County, Levi Matthew Shortway, who is soon to be of Havelock.

Sue Book, Sun Journal Staff

There’s a new boy in town, the first of the 2013 New Year in Craven County, Levi Matthew Shortway, who is soon to be of Havelock.

The youngest Shortway entered the world at 4:42 p.m. on Tuesday to the sound of his father, Cherry Point Marine Corps Capt. Matthew Shortway, who assisted in the birth, telling mother Lindsay Shortway, “It’s a boy.”

The couple, married for six years and already parents to daughter Anna Elizabeth Shortway, 2½, were hoping for a boy, but decided to let the gender be a surprise, said Lindsay Shortway.

“We didn’t know with either child if it was a boy or girl and were really anxious, hoping first for a healthy child, but also hoping it would be a boy,” she said. “There were tears of joy, and he looks like his daddy.”

The 7-pound, 9-ounce, 21-inch-long boy born New Year’s Day at CarolinaEast Medical Center will be called Levi, Shortway said. “We picked Levi because Matthew in the Bible was named Levi first. His dad’s name is Matthew.”

Shortway agreed that the delivery for baby No. 2 was “so much different; six hours total, really smooth.”

His sister also was born at CarolinaEast, tying two knots to Craven County for the family, which has orders to move to 29 Palms, Calif., in March. Shortway also said she and her husband “both have other family members born here.”

Shortway said that when her first child saw her new brother “she got really wide-eyed and said ‘I’m a big sister.’ She wanted to hold him right away and give him a kiss.”

Levi’s mother is originally from Gouverneur, N.Y., about two hours north of Syracuse, “almost in Canada,” she said, and his father, a Marine Corps air support officer who was “promoted to captain on the same day our son was born,” is from Vernon, N.J.

“My husband and I both graduated from Clarkson University in New York,” said Shortway. “I started working for Boeing Corporation in Seattle and was able to keep my job and travel with my husband” as a data analyst working from home.

In addition to the media photographs from the New Year’s first baby, little Levi also has already been photographed by his Mom, whose hobby is photography. She shoots with a Canon digital SR camera and often does “families and children pictures on the side.”

Shortway said she thinks the family is made now.

“We feel very blessed to have one of each,” she said. “For now, we’re happy with two. We also have two dogs. Good things come in twos.”

Mom’s hopes for the New Year’s baby: “I hope all his dreams come true, that he goes after everything he wants in life, and that he looks out for his big sister.”

Sue Book can be reached at 252-635-5665 or sue.book@newbernsj.com. Follow her Twitter@SueJBook.

Advertising

News

Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, except where noted.
New Bern Sun Journal ~ 3200 Wellons Blvd., New Bern, NC 28562 ~ Privacy Policy ~ Terms Of Service